Business: Wanted: Faster Write-Offs

Businessmen have long agreed that the best way to encourage spending on
new plant and equipment is faster tax write-offs on capital goods
depreciation. The question for the U.S. Treasury is how to bring the
present hodgepodge of depreciation tax rules (not fully revised since
1942) up to date. Last week businessmen themselves suggested a simple,
sensible way: more than half of some 3,500 U.S. companies surveyed by
the Treasury Department favored a free hand in using their own business
judgment in determining the useful life of machinery for tax purposes.

At present, many a company benefits from the regulation that allows...